MashReads Podcast: We're all on board with 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

If you learn one thing from this week's episode of the "MashReads Podcast" we hope it's that you always remember to bring a towel when you travel.

That's just one of the many important tips that we learned when discussing Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which you can listen to right here.

If you're unfamiliar with the long legacy of the Hitchhiker's Guide series, it is a self-proclaimed "trilogy" consisting of five books, that tells the tale of the dull, old Englishman Arthur Dent. He was just your average run-of-the-mill guy until he was whisked away into the furthest reaches of the galaxy by his friend, who turned out to be an alien, minutes before the Earth is blown to smithereens.

Luckily, the two were picked up by a spaceship powered by improbability, of all things, and captained by the Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox.

What follows is a nonstop series of madcap misfortunes as Dent & Co. tangle with the horrors of Vogon poetry, a very depressed android, and an unlucky pot of petunias.

It's a weird book. But we loved it!

So, listen to me, Martha Tesema, and MJ Franklin discuss the bewildering, absurd, and ultimately charming portrait of the galaxy that Adams created.

And as always, we close the show with recommendations:

• Peter recommends Ta-Nehisi Coates' new piece in The Atlantic, "I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye: Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom." It's his take on Kanye's latest pop culture whirlwind. "It is just a read that combines Coates' personal experience with cultural experience and ties it all together in this honest and blunt way."

• Martha recommends the movie Kodachrome if you really want to cry. Starring Ed Harris, Elizabeth Olson, and Jason Sudeikis, it's about a dying photographer who wants to go on a trip with his son to develop discontinued film. "I was actually sobbing. It's not the best movie I've ever seen, it just caught me way off guard."

• MJ recommends Slate's new podcast "Decoder Ring," which investigates and tells the history about random things in life. The first episode The Laff Box explores the rise and fall of the laugh track. "It's so fascinating. I found myself learing so much. It's just such a good piece of reporting as well as just a good story to tell."

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